


Haunted

by Kenjiandco



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Choking, Dark Shiro (Voltron), Face-Fucking, M/M, Messy, Mildly Dubious Consent, Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Shiro gets called out by absolutely everyone including his own split personality, Split Personalities, giant telepathic robot lions make the best wingmen, ill-advisedly acrobatic blowjobs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-29 19:23:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13933653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kenjiandco/pseuds/Kenjiandco
Summary: “Who are you?” Lance asked the hard-edged light behind Shiro’s face, and the grin stretched a few teeth wider.“He calls me the Gladiator,” that dark voice purred, “when I get strong enough he can’t ignore me anymore.”“What are you? A construct? Part of the AI for the arm?”“You’d love to believe that, wouldn’t you? He’d love to believe that too.” Hot breath washed against his prickling skin, the deep rasp of the Gladiator’s voice vibrating against his back. Shiro’s voice but not Shiro’s words. Warm lips brushed down the curve of his neck and Lance couldn’t stop the squirming pulse of his hips, couldn’t stop his head falling to the side, baring his skin to the slow, burning press of those lips. Was becoming more aware by the second, as his breath caught and his blood rushed, that he didn’t want to stop it.





	Haunted

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as a commission for the absolutely wonderful lemonorangelime, light of my life and fire of my headcanons, who requested it in July and is a saint for waiting eight months for me to crank out 5,000 words. ILU Deb, enjoy your Soft Dark Shiro. 
> 
> Please note, while all sexytimes in this fic are consensual, it's also intentionally intense and somewhat scary at the outset. If you're sensitive to that kind of thing or prefer to avoid elements of dubious consent, I'd recommend steering clear of this one.

Shiro had a tendency to disappear for a few days, maybe once a month or so, but Lance never thought much of it. The guy lived his life in close quarters with a pack of kids who barely qualified as college age, leader of the team, weight of the galaxy on his shoulders…although Lance privately suspected Shiro could work nights at a gas station and still carry the weight of the galaxy on his shoulders. It’s just kind of who he was.

But who could blame him for wanting to get away, once in awhile? He always turned up again after a few days, with a tired smile and a few words to deflect any worries. So when Lance wandered past the Black Lion’s empty hangar on his way to bed, it didn’t occur to him to be concerned. Not until he jolted awake, late that night, with an odd sensation niggling insistently away at the back of his mind.

It was a familiar feeling, sort of, albeit one you’d never really get used to. Something very loud and very powerful doing its best to be heard without being overwhelming, but still as impossible to ignore as the tremors of an earthquake, something felt in the bones more than heard.

It was the Lions. And the Lions were worried.

Neither Red nor Blue were in their hangars, and that _was_ weird. The Lions could move on their own, of course, but they rarely _did,_ unless it was Red jumping onto a rock or taking a few extra strides on landing, just to remind him who was in charge.

Lance followed the tugging in his mind, barefoot and bare chested under his jacket, not quite sure how they were leading him but still sure of where to go. That lead him out onto the chilly blue and purple plains of the planet that was the castle’s current host, dew soaking his pants and freezing his feet, and up a low swell in the ground where the two lions sat on their haunches side by side, huge metal heads tilted up towards the stars. There was something oddly lonely about the sight, those two giant silhouettes on the hill, nothing but black cutouts against the stars.

“Hey.” Lance crested the hill to stand beside Red, and put his hand on the edge of a forepaw. “What’s wrong, girl?”

For a long moment his lion didn’t respond, not beyond the slow, hot worry pulsing through the link between them. Then she stepped back, carefully avoiding him with paws as tall as he was, and hunkered down on all fours, jaw dropping open.

“Where are we going?”

The lion’s eyes flashed with something that looked a lot like frustration. Lance shrugged, zipped his jacket up over his bare chest, and climbed up into the Lion’s cockpit. The console snapped to life around him much faster than usual, no gentle hum of instruments warming up. Lance reached for the controls...and then thought better of it. He wasn’t the one who knew where they needed to go, after all. He pulled his hand back, and rubbed a palm comfortingly along the console.

“Okay, girl. Show me.”

The Red Lion blasted into the sky without another second’s delay.

The flight was a short one, just a hop over the moonlit hills and down into a craggy valley. Lance vaguely recognized the spot: the locals (a race of furry little sluglike creatures with rows of small, pale hands down their backs and a penchant for intricate stone architecture totally at odds with their primitive appearance)  brought them here, back when they first arrived on the planet, to show off the architecture of the old wartime fort carved into the rocky hillside. It was an imposing landscape, all black and silver angles in the moonlight, and it seemed a world apart from the soft grassy plains above.

Red swept down low over the lip of the canyon, and it was disorienting as all hell to Lance’s pilot senses, feeling his vehicle dropping altitude totally outside of his control. His Lion rumbled softly beneath him, like she wanted to be reassuring.

He didn’t see the Black Lion until a moment before Red’s paws touched the rock. Hunkered down on the lip of the canyon, the huge dark starship blended right into the sharp black shadows, eyes dimmed and triangular wings folded in close to its back.

The Black Lion’s big blunt head turned as Red touched softly down, eyes lighting up with a hum. Lance waited for Red to crouch down and lower her head for him to disembark…but instead she padded over to the other Lion, and gently bumped their noses together in an unmistakable gesture of affection, soft and tender and somehow the most _alive_ thing he’d ever seen the Lions do.

The second Lance climbed out of his Lion, bare feet instantly freezing cold on the damp rocks, the Black Lion’s head swung towards him, eyes brightening. Lance had to resist the urge to jump back behind Red’s foreleg: the Black Lion had always intimidated him more than he’d like to admit. He stayed where he was, damp and shivering and regretting his decision not to grab his boots, pinned in place by the floodlights of the Lion’s eyes as it peered down its nose at him. And then…the searchlight intensity dimmed, and Lance’s teeth clacked together with the rumble of the Black Lion settling down onto its forelegs, bringing its head level with the shivering human before it. He wasn’t sure if the sound it made was a growl or a purr or just the noises of its machinery, but it sounded…plaintive, almost, uncertain. Like on this weird moon drenched night even this Lion was worried. And Lance realized that the sound hadn’t been a sound at all: it was another nudge, deep in his hindbrain, but so much _bigger_ he could only comprehend it as a tremor in the world around him. The Black Lion wanted to talk to him.

He could feel the expectant gaze of both machines on him as Lance nervously stepped closer. “What’s going on, uh—” _Sir? Ma’am? Commander? Your Felineness?_ Lance gave up on that line of thought. “Where’s Shiro? Is he in trouble?”

There was that bone shaking rumble again, and the Black Lion turned its head to stare down into the canyon. Lance followed its gaze, peering over the stone lip, cautious on the wet rock.  There was a faint purple glow down there, deep in the shattered bones of the old fortress clinging to the canyon. Lance frowned, recognizing the honeycomb outline of the glowing dome far below him. That was a hex field, the glowing energy barriers the Lions could throw up to keep intruders out.

_Or,_ supplied the part of Lance’s brain raised on a dozen generations of Caribbean monster stories, _to keep something in._

“Shiro?” he asked the two Lions, crouched beside him now, and winced as their reply made his brain vibrate. “The _hell_ is he doing down there?” He stood up, suppressing a shiver as he scraped his bangs out of his eyes with a chilly hand. “Okay. Okay. Ugh. This is not how I expected this night to go, but…okay.” He reached up and knocked as high up as he could reach on Red’s jaw. “Open up. No, c’mon, _open up,_ you’ve got stuff I need in there. I can’t believe I exfoliated for _this,_ ” he grumbled to himself, as his lion stepped back and dropped her jaw to let him in.

Twenty minutes, an old pair of Keith’s boots, and a rope firmly anchored to Red’s tail later, Lance rappelled gingerly down into the canyon, muttering curses as his feet slipped on the damp stones and the rope bit into his palms. In the small sliver of his brain not being used to avoid death-by-sharp-rock, he tried out and discarded a few dozen scenarios that could have _possibly_ demanded Shiro coming all the way out here and setting up a forcefield halfway down a cliff in the dead of night on an alien world. And put the lions so on edge in the process…

He’d wondered, probably a little too late, how he was going to get into the old fortress from this bizarre angle of approach, but once he got down there he was relieved to find relatively intact paving, and a flight of crumbly but solid stairs leading down into the bombed-out guts of the building. Out of the wind, it was appreciably warmer and dryer as he picked his way towards the glow of the hex field, nestled down in what must have been a dungeon. The field carved off the end of one corridor, tunneled deep into the rock, and through the shifting light Lance could vaguely make out an old cell…and a dark figure, huddled in a corner.

“ _Shiro!”_ Lance ran forward, pressed his hands against the glowing barrier, only to be sent stumbling backwards as an onslaught of images and sounds and raw _emotions_ slapped across his senses, _heat exhaustion pain fear, fear so pervasive it was as familiar as breathing did he even remember what it felt like to not be afraid, tasting blood in his mouth as his vision sparked with agony, blood running from a gash across his face head swimming with pain and adrenaline and the roar of the crowds, stumbling, knowing he was losing control, falling into the dark…_

_…something taking over…_

_Something taking over_ and the sting of his knees hitting the ground jolted Lance back to reality, bringing his hand to his face and half expecting to feel blood until the sensory onslaught began to fade. One last time, he felt that nervous, encouraging nudging of the Lions in the back of his mind…and then the glowing forcefield vanished like a popping soap bubble.

Lance blinked, shaking his throbbing head. As the pulsing purple sparkles began to clear from his vision, the huddle in the corner moved, sucking in a panicked breath Lance barely heard through the lingering ring in his ears.

“ _Lance?”_ Shiro sat up on his knees, shuffling closer to the old cell bars. “Lance, what are you doing here?”

Lance let that pass, looking around the crumbling ruin with interest now that the distorting effect of the hex field had faded.

“Okay. Interesting. Definitely… aesthetic. Drafty though.” He peered through the bars at Shiro’s corner, set up with a bedroll and a little space heater, and a stack of water and energy bars. And the cell gate hung loose on its hinges, but Shiro had wrapped a thick, new-looking chain around the door…what the hell? “A little on the dramatic side though. I mean, if you wanted some time to yourself all you had to do was _ask.”_ He rattled the door experimentally – not an inch of give in the chain. “What’s going on, man?”

Shiro shivered, even though it was much warmer down here out of the wind. He wouldn’t look at Lance; not just avoiding his eyes but twisting his whole head away, as though trying to keep Lance entirely out of his line of vision.

“You shouldn’t be here…” he whispered, clutching at the wrist of his metal arm. Lance edged closer, trying to get a look at his face, and Shiro twisted his head away and squeezed his eyes shut, muscles working in his temples as his jaw clenched. “It’s not safe…”

“Yeah, no shit,” Lance said, eyeballing the crumbling stone and sheer drops all around them. “Well, I’m here now, so how ‘bout you come out of there and we go talk about it somewhere nice and warm and not a cave? C’mon man, you’re scaring the Lions.”

Shiro shuddered hard, falling back away from the bars. He held his Galra arm stiff at his side and scrabbled awkwardly at the pack beside his bedroll.

“Shiro? What’s wrong?”

Shiro didn’t answer, digging through the pack, frantic as a man counting wires on a ticking bomb. His body lurched to the side and he snarled under his breath, metal arm jerking, almost like it was fighting against his control.

“Shiro?” Lance grabbed the chain, tugging at it – the padlock didn’t budge, and Shiro grabbed something from his pack, small and silver between his fingers: a _key,_ Lance realized, a second before Shiro threw it hard through the bars of his cell.

“ _What are you-“_ Lance spun around, trying to track the tiny sparkle as it bounced away amongst the rocks, diving in the direction he’d seen it fly—

\--and a glowing metal hand shot through the bars behind him and locked itself tight around his neck.

“ _He’s never as subtle as he thinks, is he_ ?” purred an unfamiliar voice, as the arm pulled him back against the bars, irresistible as a tractor beam. “ _He thinks he hides it all so well, poor sweet_ stupid _Shiro.”_

The metal hand buzzed against his skin, little stinging electric pulses as its fingers spread, dipping beneath the collar of his jacket and sliding across the bare skin beneath. Lance shivered, the pulsing energy running down his spine in thick bolts of heat and he found himself relaxing, submitting to the pressure on his neck, letting it draw him up tight against the old iron bars.

“ _Oh, I understand. I understand now. I know why he wanted to keep me away from_ you, _pretty little pilot.”_ His hands wandered down Lance’s bare chest, hot flesh and cold metal. Hot breath on his neck, so close his sensitive skin burned with something like apprehension, something like desire and he let his head fall back against the bars as that voice purred in his ear. _“He might be afraid to touch you, but_ I’m _not.”_

The hand at his neck wandered down his chest, and with the freedom to move his head Lance saw its metal fingers glowing against his skin, so bright they washed out white at the center of a corona of purple light. The same fingers he’d seen shear through alloy android bodies, rip them like paper into molten edged shreds, the same fingers he’d seen Shiro staring at in white faced shock, “ _Where’d you learn that?” “I have_ no _idea…”_

The new metal arm the Galra gave him, all that Galra tech and Galra magic wired straight into Shiro’s naked brain…and that _couldn’t_ be a one way street, could it?

_The Galra gave you a new arm…what the hell else did they give you?_

Lance turned his head awkwardly, rusty bars cold against his cheek, and looked up into Shiro’s face. Shiro, his commander, his idol, his friend, the center of so many hot, guilty, confusing dreams, all of them…but also none of them at all.

The expression on Shiro’s face was one he’d never seen before, head tilted sharply to one side and teeth bared in a wide, wolf-like grin that stretched his face and narrowed his eyes…eyes that were _totally_ unfamiliar. Shiro’s dark, kind, tired eyes were gone, hidden behind an odd golden cast that made his irises glow faintly as thought lit from behind, totally hiding all the soft, deep flickers of emotion that Shiro tried not to let anyone see.

“Who are you?” Lance asked the hard-edged light behind Shiro’s face, and the grin stretched a few teeth wider.

“He calls me the Gladiator,” that dark voice purred, “when I get strong enough he can’t ignore me anymore.”

“What are you? A construct? Part of the AI for the arm?”

The sparks against his chest snapped from a quiet buzz to a biting sting, just for an instant, just long enough to have his back arching hard, Shiro’s flesh and blood hand a bruising pressure on his hip. Shiro laughed, low and mirthless as Lance sagged against the bars, against the heat of Shiro’s body behind him, heart racing.

“You’d love to believe that, wouldn’t you? _He’d_ love to believe that too.” Hot breath washed against his prickling skin, the deep rasp of the Gladiator’s voice vibrating against his back. Shiro’s voice but not Shiro’s words. Warm lips brushed down the curve of his neck and Lance couldn’t stop the squirming pulse of his hips, couldn’t stop his head falling to the side, baring his skin to the slow, burning press of those lips. Was becoming more aware by the second, as his breath caught and his blood rushed, that he didn’t _want_ to stop it.

He covered Shiro’s wandering hands with his own, warm flesh and cool metal buzzing with blood and power, traced their languorous movements down his chest, over his hips, long fingers curling tight inside his thigh as a metal thumb slipped under the hem of his shirt, sending a shivering pulse of lust through his core. The corckscrewed surface of a wrought iron bar pressed up between his legs, cold against the building heat and he found himself pressing back against it for the friction, biting his lips as Shiro’s fingers flexed on his skin, encouraging the half-conscious motion.

“If only you knew what he thinks when you’re around,” the Gladiator murmured, a low chuckle in his voice. His hair brushed Lance’s skin, cool in the wake of his soft breath. “The things he’s imagined, things he won’t even admit to _himself_ he wants...poor Shiro, I don’t think it ever crossed his mind to just... _take_ it…”

Hands clenched, muscles flexed, irresistible strength spun Lance around, pulled him back hard against the bars of Shiro’s self-imposed prison.

“He doesn’t see the way you look at him. Doesn’t _let_ himself see it.” His fingers slipped under Lance’s chin, tilting his head back, forcing him to look up into those unfamiliar yellow eyes. “But I do.” He pressed his human hand against Lance’s chest, fingertips rough on the bare skin at the base of his throat, while the metal arm kept him locked in place. “Your heart’s racing. Are you afraid, pretty pilot?”

Lance’s pulse pounded in his ears, blood rushing beneath his skin, following the surprisingly gentle trail of those hands on his skin. He should be afraid - he _was_ afraid, a little, as adrenaline and arousal sparked through his veins. It was intense, this buzzing throbbing contact with this thing whispering in Shiro’s voice. It was intense, it was scary...but it wasn’t dangerous. The Lions brought him here, and the Lions wouldn’t put him in harm’s way.

“No,” Lance said softly, so much conviction in his voice that it even surprised _him_ a little. “I’m not afraid.”

And he saw his own surprise mirrored back to him in those eyes, cracks racing across the Gladiator’s haunting, taunting facade. The grip pinning him to the bars loosened, and it gave Lance the space (and the courage) to bring his hands up and cup them gently against Shiro’s face.

“Shiro might be scared of you,” Lance whispered, and watched the sick yellow light in Shiro’s eyes flicker and fade, just for a moment. “But I’m not.” He stretched up on his toes, letting his body press tight against Shiro’s, sharing warmth in the cool cave air. He was aware of a faint purple sparkle in the corner of his eye, points of laser light drawing closer. “You’re a part of him. And that means you’re not gonna hurt me.”

He felt Shiro shiver, despinte the bars between their bodies, a shuddering sight escaping his lips as Lance pulled him down into a kiss.

The Black Lion’s shimmering purple hex field closed in further as they kissed, slipped over their bodies harmless as fairy lights and began to constrict around the keyless padlock holding Shiro’s prison closed.

The sound of the lock shattering was barely a whisper as the force field crushed it into so much sparkly dust. It was the clatter of the chain slipping to the ground that brought lance up for air, head jerking to the side as the cell door creaked open. He stared up at Shiro -- at the Gladiator -- at _Shiro_ for one weightless moment, breath panting through kiss swollen lips, before Shiro kicked the cell door open and Lance tumbled into his arms. His feet slipped on the uneven ground and Shiro caught him up, spun them both with a kind of visceral, animal grace and pressed Lance back against the bars, ribbons of purple light shooting down his metal arm.

Lance gasped as he felt himself being lifted, pushed off the slick rocks and locked his legs tight around Shiro’s waist. The wrought iron bars dug into his back again, jabbing into his skin hard enough to bruise but that wasn’t important, none of it was important compared to the burning weight of Shiro’s body pressing against his chest, the heat of Shiro’s arms around him, holding him, _kissing_ him, years of guilty fantasies unspooling in this cool, rocky reality under the alien cliffs.

Shiro’s flesh and blood hand slipped under his jacket, broad palm flattened against the small of his back and pressing their bodies closer. Lance buried his face in the curve of Shiro’s neck, fingers combing through his close-cropped hair and dragging scratch marks down the back of his neck. He was all but pinned in place again, bars pressing between his legs and digging into his shoulder blades but this time he couldn’t care less, because every movement drove him closer to Shiro and _it wasn’t enough--_

Lance growled his frustration into Shiro’s mouth and bucked hard against his grip, trying to wriggle free. He might as well have tried to break the iron bars.

“Shiro,” he gasped, trying to think through the pounding desire flooding his veins. He got no answer, just another bruising kiss pressed to his already throbbing lips.

“ _Shiro,”_ Lance repeated, more determined this time, and punctuated the name with a hard bite to Shiro’s lower lip. Shiro pulled back with a gasp, and Lance dragged his nails hard down both Shiro’s arms, digging into muscled flesh and skipping over joins in brushed metal. The sting loosened Shiro’s grip enough for Lance to squirm free, too big boots slipping on the wet stone. That was fine.

He didn’t really plan on staying upright long.

Lance dropped right to his knees while Shiro was still reorienting to his sudden absence, and brought his hands to Shiro’s hips. He dipped his head, mouthing over the heard line of heat where Shiro’s cock pressed against his pants, rubbing his thumbs over the dip inside his hipbones as he urged Shiro’s hips closer to his face. Shiro cursed raggedly, (he’d never heard Shiro swear before) metal arm striking sparks where it slammed against the bars above his head. Lance looked up at him through his lashes, holding those unfamiliar yellow-tinted eyes as he fumbled Shiro out of his pants by feel, his cock hot and heavy and leaking against Lance’s palm.

Shiro’s eyes still had that odd yellow tinge, but there was a light behind them now that hadn’t been there before, warmer and deeper than the cold black stare of the Gladiator alone, and the hand that he pressed to Lance’s cheek as he parted his lips to take him in was gentle and tender.

Lance shivered at the warm, soft touch, tilting his head ever so slightly to nuzzle into Shiro’s palm as he worked the thick length deeper into his mouth.

“Lance--” Shiro’s voice came out rough, fingers tangling and tugging in Lance’s hair. That rasp sounded good in his gentle voice, but he didn’t sound nearly as wrecked as Lance wanted him to.

Not yet, anyway.

It had been a good little while since he’d done this, but Lance found the rhythm coming back to him fairly quickly, remembering to breathe through his nose and relax his throat and sink steadily deeper, digging his fingers into the swell of Shiro’s ass to encourage the steady hitching of his hips, pulling him deeper by degrees as Shiro’s cock pulsed pressed tight against his tongue.

_“_ Fuck, _Lance--”_

_That_ was it.

Lance hummed his approval as Shiro’s hips pulsed harder, with more purpose. The hand in his hair tugged hard, tilting his head back and Lance was more than happy to follow it, relaxing his throat and opening up his mouth for Shiro. Shiro made a gutteral sound deep in his chest, half moan half growl, metal thumb pressing up tight against the hinge of Lance’s jaw and holding his head immobile, tiny purple sparks popping against the delicate skin under his chin, little sharp stings that kept him grounded as the head of Shiro’s cock pressed into the back of his throat and the edges of his vision swam with fairy lights. He shut his eyes and tipped his head up more, breathing fast and ragged through his nose as he ground a palm against his crotch, too far gone to deal with his pants, just pressing up against the friction as bolts of pleasure ran down his spine, and--

And the tip of a boot knocked against his wrist, kicking his hand away, leaving his  hips pulsing up against empty air. Lance groaned raggedly, then choked around Shiro’s cock as he slammed it in deep, thick precome rolling across his tongue. He gasped his breath back as Shiro pulled away, and managed to relax his jaw again in time for the next deep thrust, coming faster and more erratic as Shiro’s fingers tightened in his hair. Lance stared up at him with tears of exertion pricking in the corners of his eyes, hands curled into fists on his thighs as he all but writhed on his knees, desperate for something to touch him and knowing that if he tried he’d just be denied again, knowing that he had to be good for Shiro, for Shiro, for _Shiro--_

For Shiro who was growling with every breath, who’s hips were stuttering as they slammed against Lance’s lips, who Lance couldn’t stop himself from touching, spreading his fingers over Shiro’s flexing, clenching abs as he drove in deep once more, curled over Lance and gasping his name as his cock pulsed hot and come pooled in Lance’s throat and he let out a muffled, gasping moan, trying to swallow what he could.

The grip on his hair released and Shiro drew back, and Lance let his head fall back against the bars behind him, gasping in a few long deep breaths. He was still desperately hard and slick in his pants, untouched cock pulsing with painful frustration and a few stray drops of Shiro’s come clinging to his lips. Before he’d caught his breath enough to lick them off, a metal finger slipped between his lips, clicking cold against his teeth.

“Suck,” Shiro commanded, his voice just barely more than a rasping whisper, and Lance closed his aching  jaw and tipped his head back to obey. His metal fingers tasted electric, vibrating faintly as they stroked across the surface of his tongue, the sensation soft and almost comforting after his mouth had been so thoroughly used. He swayed forward to chase them as Shiro pulled back, twisting and crooking his fingers to tease across the roof of his mouth, but a hand on his shoulder stopped him, and Lance felt himself being lifted again, boosted into the air and stripped out of his pants like he weighed as much as a doll. Shiro pulled him in close for a warm, messy open mouthed kiss, tongue catching a few stray drops from Lance’s lips, and then Shiro was lifting him again, hands firm under his thighs.

Lance swayed, unstable and disoriented for a second as Shiro boosted him high enough to hook Lance’s bare legs over his goddamn _shoulders,_ and Lance reached up to grab the bars behind him before he could lose his balance. His knuckles whitened on the bars as Shiro kissed across the plane of his stomach, hands on Lance’s lower back to hold him up and meticulously avoiding Lance’s straining, leaking cock, arched untouched against his belly. Slicked up metal fingers, wet with the mix of saliva and come, curled against his entrance, stroking and pressing but not entering as hot breath ghosted across his oversensitive cock with no relief forthcoming. He tried to form words, a name, a plea, _something,_ but all his overloaded brain could come up with was a desperate whine, tossing his head back and forth and arching til his shoulders dug into the bars, trying to press himself closer to Shiro’s teasing mouth or fall back against the fleeting touch of his fingers.

Shiro pressed his cheek against the inside of Lance’s thigh and looked up at him with a crooked grin, eyes dark beneath his silvery bangs, and chuckled softly to himself at the absolute mess perched on his shoulders. “Alright, baby,” he murmured, brushing a kiss against the twitching muscles, and dipped his head forward to close his lips around the tip of Lance’s cock. Lance moaned, arching up again, but Shiro pulled back so just the tip rested on his tongue, suckling gently as he pressed slick fingers past the barrier of his entrance.

The second Shiro entered him, Lance was _gone,_ no matter how much he wanted to hold out for more. His hips worked helplessly, torn between thrusting forward into Shiro’s mouth or falling back on the fingers working in deeper and deeper, cool metal and tiny electric pulses against the stinging stretch, gasping out a garbled mess of moans and whimpers all tangled around Shiro’s name. He felt another low chuckle, shaking Shiro’s shoulders under his thighs and vibrating where his lips pressed against sensitive skin, and then he pulled back, crooked his fingers deep inside and laughed again as Lance’s release painted hot white stripes across his face.

 

Lance was barely aware of his feet hitting the floor again, nothing but the warmth of Shiro’s arm around him and another soft chuckle close to his ear penetrating the fog of his fucked out brain. He let himself be steered to the little bedroll nest in the corner and tucked inside the sleeping bag, still sweaty and fuzzy and naked from the waist down, and hummed his approval as a warm, naked chest pressed against his back, metal fingers warmed from the heat inside Lance’s body drawing idle patterns across his collarbones.

He was content to do nothing but drift in the afterglow for quite some time, as warm lips wandered up and down the back of his neck and the light leaking down from the canyon edge took on the soft gray tinge of dawn. Then Shiro’s hand drifted down to curl around Lance’s hip and pull him back against a line of thick heat as his teeth stung the curve of his neck and shoulder. Lance didn’t bother to open his eyes, just laced his finger with Shiro and turned his head to kiss him over his shoulder, tasting the salty tang of his come lingering on Shiro’s lips.

The second time was slow and deep and patient, moving together in an easy, heaving rhythm as Shiro’s hands worshipped the lines of his body and bit deep purple marks along the planes of his neck and shoulders, and Lance hooked a leg behind his hips to pull him deeper and hold him there, rocking together hot and slow until it all built up to sweep them both away, fingers tangled and lips pressed tight together, gasping in each other’s breath.

The third time was right on the brink of pain all jumbled up with pleasure, brightening daylight stinging Lance’s eyes and sliding gold and silver off the contours of Shiro’s back, head buried between Lance’s thighs as he coaxed another climax from his exhausted body with lips and teeth and unforgiving fingers crooked deep inside him and not letting up until Lance was bucking up against him, nails scratching glimmering streaks across the sunlight dappling Shiro’s skin.

After that, he slept, deeper than he had since the day he left Earth in a long forgotten magic lion.

 

By the time Lance woke up again, the light above the cliff had a distinct sunset tinge to it, his abs ached like hell...and Shiro was still spooned up behind him, white bangs spilling over Lance’s shoulder where he was nuzzled into his neck. Lance shifted slowly, trying not to wake him, til he could look down at Shiro’s face, soft with sleep. The low gold light filtering down from above threw the fine, tired lines at the corners of his eyes into sharp relief. Lance frowned, replaying the words in that haunting, taunting voice.

_What are you? A construct?_

_You’d love to believe that...he’d love to believe that too._

_He calls me the Gladiator...when he can’t pretend I don’t exist…_

_He calls me the Gladiator_

That flash of emotion through his head, when he touched the Black Lion’s barrier, pain and terror and something taking over... _where did you learn to do that? I have no idea..._ and the shattered look of shock in the Gladiator’s gold-tinged eyes, in the split second after Lance said he wasn’t afraid…

How long had Shiro spent in the pits, how long from the moment he threw himself at Matt Holt, smashed his best friend’s knee and split his face open and screamed for blood to buy him another few hours, days, weeks in hell? How long fighting for his life, wondering if each new opponent was a mindless Quintessence creation...or another kidnapped victim, fighting not because they wanted to live but because they were still afraid to die.  And what if there was a way to shield yourself, a mask a gentlehearted pilot could slip away behind...how long before it got easier to just give up to the mask you called the Gladiator, let it take control and hide in the dark behind your own eyes?

And what did you do, when you didn’t need the mask anymore? How could you throw away a part of your own mind?

His sweatshirt was long ago lost to the tangle of clothes now surrounding the bedroll, but Lance’s PDA was still on his wrist. He turned onto his side, listening for any hitch in Shiro’s steady breathing, and tapped his way into the Castle’s sprawling data repository, which Pidge had taken the liberty of renaming after one of those weird old-timey paperbacks she couldn’t get enough of.

His eyelids started to get heavy again after about an hour of wandering through _The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,_ but Lance had a dozen bookmarked articles and enough speed reading to add some weight to the theory bouncing around in his brain. He shut the PDA down and snuggled down again, rolling over to nuzzle his nose into Shiro’s chest.

He must’ve fallen asleep again, but it couldn’t have been for too long: it wasn’t yet full dark when Lance’s eyes flickered open to softly moving shadows and a cold gap in the bedroll where Shiro used to be. He blinked sleepily, trying to trace the stealthy movement as Shiro picked up his boots and tiptoed towards the lopsided gate and _oh Goddammit--_

Lance tried to disentangle himself from the blankets, but he hadn’t even had time to sit up before Shiro rebounded off an invisible barrier with a blinding purple flash. He fell flat on his ass and sat up rubbing at his nose where it had impacted with...the purple hex barrier now sparkling across the door of the cell.

“Oh _come on--”_ he hissed under his breath. Lance rolled over, propped his chin on his hands, and watched with interest. Shiro didn’t notice, glaring up towards the mouth of the canyon. “It’s _me, let me out._ What do you--it’s not-- _how do you even know what a party foul is?_ I’m -- _how the hell am I supposed to make him breakfast?”_

“Aww, don’t be mad.” Shiro’s head snapped around, and Lance grinned at him, waggling his eyebrows. “She’s a hell of a wingman, that lion.”

Shiro dropped his boots and buried his head in his hands. “You shouldn’t be here, Lance. It’s not...it’s not safe.”

“Yeah, no shit.” Lance shifted uncomfortably, wincing at the sting of his scraped up back. “You think the med pods do tetanus vaccinations, cause those bars do _not_ look sanitary. To say nothing of the structural integrity of this place.”

Shiro’s eyes flicked towards him, long enough to take in the scrapes and bruises and patchy purple bite marks scattered over Lance’s skin, before he turned his head away. “I meant... _I’m_ not safe.”

Lance just waited, raising his eyebrows. Shiro still wouldn’t look at him, staring down at his fingers tangled in his lap. “There’s...there’s a darkness in me, Lance.”

Lance rolled his eyes heavenword.

“Yup. Met ‘im. Blew ‘im.” He rolled to one side, wincing at the bite of cold air as the blanket slipped off his bare shoulder, and grabbed a protein bar from the stack. “Don’ hate him, though,” he added with his mouth full.

“He could’ve really hurt you…”

Lance snorted. “Dude. _You_ could really hurt me. So could any person. So could a dog. So could a _dedicated_ _duck.”_ He sat up on his knees and leaned into Shiro’s space, giving him a hard poke to the chest. “Get your head out of your ass, Shiro. Your ‘dark side’ is a slinky edgelord with a martyr complex and some serious boundary issues, and he’s about as dangerous as a death metal band.”

Shiro glanced up at Lance through his tousled bangs, and then blew out a long, shaky breath through his nose. It wasn’t _quite_ a laugh, but at least it wasn’t a sigh.

“I’m sorry, Lance.”

Lance finished off the last of his protein bar and stretched with a wince before reaching for his sweatshirt. “Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to _him.”_

“Him?”

“Your other half. Your friend. The Gladiator.” Lance scooted over to sit next to Shiro, and reached out to take his hands. “I get it, okay? I do. You’ve been through hell and you did what you had to do to survive, and maybe that means that you’re not as in control as you’d like to be, and that’s gotta be scary as hell. But no more of _this,_ alright?” He gestured around at the crumbling stone and iron. “No more hiding yourself away in the dark and pushing everyone away. No more cutting us off. And that--” Lance raised a hand and knocked his knuckles gently against Shiro’s forehead, “Includes your friend in there.”

Shiro looked away again, biting his lip. Lance sighed, and pulled his PDA off his wrist. “Here.”

“What’s this?”

Lance shrugged. “Abnormal psych papers, mostly. Read about it this morning - check it out. Split personality disorder. Old earth world thing, pretty much debunked these days, but it’s interesting reading.

“Alternate personalities, especially the ones that were dangerous, or violent…well, they seemed to be created out of trauma. They tended to be unpredictable …well, kinda fucked up, but ultimately? I guess you could call them guardians.”

Shiro frowned, scrolling slowly through the text. Lance watched his face as he continued, “He’s scary, sure. He’s violent and volatile ‘cause that’s what he _had to be,_ to keep you safe. He became the things you’re the most afraid of, so he could do the things you couldn’t.”

After a long moment, Shiro turned off the PDA and wiped his hand quick across his eyes. Lance scooted close and wrapped his arms around Shiro’s waist. Shiro shivered, and then leaned into him with a sigh.

“I’m an idiot.”

“You were scared. There’s a difference.” Behind them, the faint hex barrier slowly sparkled away into insubstantiality.

“Hey.” Shiro touched Lance’s cheek with a fingertip. “You know it...it wasn’t just him, right?”

Lance smirked. “He mentioned something to that effect.”

“Lance…”

Lance laughed, and leaned his forehead against Shiro’s, shutting his eyes. “I know. I knew you were in there. I could see you in his eyes when we kissed...and when you held me...and when I came all over your face--”

Shiro winced. “You were doing _so_ well for a second there.”

“Aww c’mon, don’t tell me you’re going all vanilla on me now--”

Shiro got up so fast Lance almost tipped over, and started gathering clothes and restuffing his pack. “Lance, do not dig this hole so deep you can’t talk your way out of it.”

“You gotta admit it was hot as hell though.”

The bright pink flush shooting up the back of Shiro’s neck was all the answer he needed.

 

By the time Shiro’s little nest was bundled up it was full dark again, moonlight filtering down around the silhouettes of two lions, peering curiously over the lip of the cliff. Lance caught Shiro’s wrist at the door to the cell and pulled him close, reaching up to loop his arms around his neck. “You’re okay, right?”

Shiro bent down and kissed him, warm and sweet and soft. When his eyes opened again, there was a faint gold glow behind the irises, just for a second, before Shiro’s soft black eyes returned.

“I’m getting there.”

Lance smiled, nuzzling their noses together. “So when do I get to here about all these things you ‘dreamed about in the darkness--’”

Shiro jerked loose and looked up at the Black Lion far above them. “Leave him here.”

“Aw, Shiroooo-” Lance chased after him as Shiro stalked out the door - and rebounded off the rekindled hex barrier with a purple flash. “ _Come onnnnn…”_

Shiro propped an arm on the barrier. “Make you a deal. You tell me about this way you look at me that I apparently never noticed, and…” he grinned, sharp and wolflike, teeth sparkling in the moonlight. “I’ll do more than _tell_ you about some of the things I’ve dreamed. Deal?”

Lance swallowed hard, feeling the flush crawl its way up his cheeks.

“Deal.”


End file.
